Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Last mention of northeastern Groton, Blood Rd, etc...for a while

I suppose that readers who read all the way through my site reports are tired of the interminable discussion of rock piles and mounds "with hollows", accompanied by vague photos of a few rocks poking up through the dead leaves of the forest floor. Unfortunately it is hard to write about the technical details of these sites and even harder to convey some of the pleasure of happening upon new rock piles in the woods and being overwhelmed by their beauty and the mystery of their age and purpose. I wish I could capture the facts and the experience of being there. But I won't go on much longer about the site(s) in northeastern Groton.

Some final highlights of the walk I took last weekend: left the dirt road and spotted that "butterflied" boulder connected to a pile; kept walking and eventually spotted some small rock piles around a prominent boulder [a type of "marker pile" site]; then there was a linear feature about 30 feet long with rock piles at either end; then some low ground piles with quartz. The piles were unevenly spaced and lying next to a stone wall; then the beginning of rock piles with hollows, followed non-stop by pile after pile, then some modern agriculture, then some more piles. I had been heading north, turned back, and was then heading south while the piles seemed to get bigger and bigger and more and more numerous until I reached a nexus, just before getting back to the dirt road. I took 98 photos, but am only posting a few. They are probably a bit repetitive.

Here we are near the end of my hike:See the larger one in the background? It is not surprising that these are essentially undisturbed. The rocky wetland would never support anything too usefully agrarian. So there they sit.

On the hilltop above was an unusual rock pile I have blogged before (but cannot find) that looked like a short stretch of stone wall:
Note the small linear spur coming off the main pile diagonally:This is unfamiliar.

So that is about it, a rewarding walk through a very extensive site east of Horse Hill. Go there, check it out, I will write about something else now.

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